In today's Global System for Mobile Communications (“GSM”) and Third Generation Partnership Project (“3GPP”) systems for cellular telephone networks, a mobile telephone in a network is capable of placing an emergency call even when access for other calls are restricted by the network during a time of access class restrictions. The network may initiate access class restrictions for various reasons. For example, some base stations in an area may fail, which causes congestion, or there may exist a state of emergency such as an earthquake or a wide-spread fire where the network may deny access for normal calls and only allow access for emergency calls. The access is controlled by the network by assigning an access class in the range of 0 to 9 to all mobile telephones as described in the technical specification, 3GPP TS 22.011 V4.8.0 (2002-09). Access class 10 is signaled over the air by the network to mobile telephones indicating whether network access for emergency calls is allowed for mobile telephones with access classes 0 to 9. During a time of access class restrictions, the network prohibits mobile telephones belonging to the barred access classes from accessing the network to place and receive a call, although access to the network for emergency calls is allowed as long as access class 10 has not been barred by the network. However, having made the emergency call, the mobile telephone not belonging to one of the allowed access classes is still barred from receiving a call during the time of access class restrictions. For example, a call back from an emergency service provider is barred even though it is an emergency-related call.